A Test match can sometimes resemble a long novel: a slow burn punctuated by sudden violence, characters shaping and reshaping their own destinies across five days. Faisalabad 2005 was one such story—richly textured, chaotic in its detail, yet ultimately unresolved. At its center stood Inzamam-ul-Haq, serene in a storm of controversy, conjuring twin centuries that carried the aura of an elegy for a victory Pakistan could not quite engineer.
England
survived at 164 for 6, and the series rolled on to Lahore. But the match, which
could so easily have become a Pakistani epic, closed instead on the quiet note
of what-might-have-been.
The
Final Day: Pakistan’s Breathless Charge and Inzamam’s Defiance
By the last
morning, the Test still sat precariously on its fulcrum. Pakistan’s innings had
wobbled early, wickets falling around Inzamam like leaves shaken from a branch.
Resuming on 41 with only the tail for company, Inzamam responded not with
desperation but with craft.
He did
something quietly subversive: he inverted tail-end tradition.
Instead of
farming the strike, he often handed it to Shoaib Akhtar—Pakistan’s new “Matthew
Hoggard” with the bat, maddeningly immovable, expertly wasteful. Shoaib
consumed 49 balls for seven runs, while Inzamam scored 59 of the 85 they added
in 27 overs. He took singles early in overs, slowed the rhythm of the game, and
removed defeat from the table. And when he needed the flourish, he produced
it—lofting Harmison into the Faisalabad haze to complete his second century of
the match and surpass Javed Miandad’s national record of 23 Test hundreds.
When he
declared Pakistan 284 ahead, he had done everything to save the match—and just
enough, perhaps, to win it.
For the
next hour, it seemed he had lit the fuse.
The
Fast-Bowling Storm: Shoaib and Rana’s Hour of Fury
If
Inzamam’s oeuvre across the match was an act of stately domination, Shoaib
Akhtar and Rana Naved-ul-Hasan provided its violent counterpoint.
After
lunch, in a spell that felt ripped from the pages of Pakistan’s fast-bowling
folklore, the pair shredded England’s top order:
Trescothick
bowled shouldering arms.
Strauss
undone by a ball that kept low.
Bell
flashing ambitiously to Akmal.
Vaughan
trapped by Naved, one of the few straightforward umpiring calls in a match
littered with controversy.
England,
staggering at 20 for 4, were staring at Multan 2.0.
For
twenty-five minutes, Faisalabad breathed fire. Every appeal carried the weight
of a series. Every dot ball seemed a step closer to Pakistan’s first home Test
series win in years. Had there been another hour of daylight—had the 55 overs
lost to bad light been available—Pakistan might have seized their moment.
But
England’s lower middle order, with Flintoff’s uncharacteristically sober fifty
at its core, held fast. The pitch—benign to the point of parody for a fifth
day—refused to deteriorate. And as the light dimmed again, salvation arrived
for England in the form of the umpires’ raised arms.
Pakistan
had done almost everything right. Almost.
Inzamam’s
First Act: High Craft, Higher Drama
The seeds
of frustration were planted much earlier. On the first two days, Inzamam’s
batting carried both inevitability and improvisation. His first hundred mixed
classical cuts with muscular straight hits, including a majestic six off
Harmison. Yet it was also shaded by chance—a few leg-before shouts the previous
evening, a dropped catch by Strauss on 79.
Around him,
the match danced with theatre:
Shahid
Afridi’s entrance triggered carnival energy, the crowd roaring as he launched
Udal onto roofs and stands in a blaze of 67-ball brilliance.
His
follow-up assault—a 92 off 85 balls—turned the second morning into spectacle
before he perished to slip.
Inzamam’s run-out, awarded after agonizing
deliberation, ignited a debate still remembered: under Law 38.2, moving to
avoid injury should have protected him.
Then came
the surreal interruption: a gas cylinder explosion near the boundary, raising
fears of something darker before being diffused. During the confusion, Afridi,
never one to avoid mischief, attempted to scuff up the pitch—caught on camera,
earning a ban.
The match
swung like a pendulum, its narrative always one incident away from combusting
entirely.
England’s
Resistance: A Day of Drift, a Night of Revival
Day three
felt like a comedown after Afridi’s theatrics. Pietersen and Bell, dropped
repeatedly, stitched together 154 with contrasting styles: Pietersen
flamboyant, Bell monastic. But as the match lulled into torpor, Shoaib revived
it with a ferocious post-tea spell—breaking Flintoff’s bat and then his stumps
with a 91mph thunderbolt.
England
finished only 16 behind Pakistan’s first-innings total thanks to a comedy-laced
last-wicket stand, Harmison reverse-sweeping Kaneria and Udal clubbing Shoaib
into submission. Pakistan, for all their command, could not quite prise the
door open.
The fourth
morning revealed the first real fissures in Pakistan’s approach:
Malik and
Salman Butt crawled to 50 in 18 overs. The tension of leading a series—an
unfamiliar landscape for Pakistan—paralyzed them. Butt’s contentious dismissal,
following Darrell Hair’s dead-ball call, further soured tempers.
Indecision
had replaced intent.
Where
Pakistan Lost Their Win
The match’s
analytical heart lies here: Pakistan had control, yet control did not translate
into victory.
Two moments
defined the missed opportunity:
The
First-Innings Fielding Lapse
Pakistan
dropped multiple catches—simple and difficult—that would have buried England
far earlier. The pressure of leading the series, as Inzamam later admitted,
crept into their hands.
The Slow
Crawl on Day Four
With a lead
to build and overs disappearing to bad light, Pakistan drifted. Safety first,
then ambition—it proved a fatal ordering. By the time they attempted to
accelerate, the light had begun its predictable retreat.
The match
was Pakistan’s to decide—not the pitch’s, not England’s. They dictated its
tempo, its mood, its narrative. And yet, at the decisive moment, they stepped
gingerly when they needed to stride.
Inzamam’s
Reflections: Triumph Without Victory
In the
aftermath, Inzamam radiated serene pride. His twin centuries had elevated him
into a new pantheon: only the fifth Pakistani to score hundreds in both innings
of a Test, and now, statistically, Pakistan’s greatest century-maker.
He spoke
modestly of Miandad:
“I would
not like to say I broke his record; I learned from him. He contributed to each
of my 24 hundreds.”
He praised
Shoaib’s menace, Rana’s craft, his team’s spirit. And yet, between the lines,
there was the quiet ache of a captain who knew the moment had been there to
claim.
“At 20 for
4, we had a chance. But the pitch was still good, and their middle order played
very well.”
Pakistan
could no longer lose the series, but they had failed to win it here. The Lahore
Test remained, but the glorious opportunity for a decisive home triumph had
slipped away.
Legacy
of the Faisalabad Test: A Moral Victory, an Unfinished Epic
In
cricket’s vast archive, Faisalabad 2005 sits as a match of high incident and
higher symbolism:
A contest
shaped by fast bowling of vintage Pakistani fire.
A captain’s
personal odyssey, rendered in twin hundreds of contrasting mood.
A Test
whose atmosphere, controversy, and drama evoked the famous Gatting–Shakoor Rana
confrontation on the same ground two decades earlier.
It was a
match Pakistan controlled but could not conquer.
A moral
victory – Yes!
A
cricketing masterpiece, certainly.
A victory denied—painfully, inevitably—by light, hesitation, and the faint tremor of nerves that comes when a team unused to leading suddenly sees the summit within reach.
Thank You
Faisal Caesar
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